Martin Heidegger quotes

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in existentialism and phenomenology. His major work, "Being and Time," explores the meaning of existence and human experience. He has profoundly impacted modern philosophy, literature, and critical theory. Here are 90 of his quotes:

Language is the house of the truth of Being. (Martin Heidegger)
Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs. View quote
Martin Heidegger
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself. View quote
Martin Heidegger
The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. View quote
Martin Heidegger
The possible ranks higher than the actual. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Transcendence constitutes selfhood. View quote
Martin Heidegger
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. (Martin Heidegger)
Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are. View quote
Martin Heidegger
From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today's literature is, for instance, largely destructive. View quote
Martin Heidegger
What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N. S. [National Socialism], but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement [namely the encounter between global technology and modern humanity] is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities. View quote
Martin Heidegger
The domination of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already decided upon even the possibilities of being attuned, that is, about the basic way in which Da-sein lets itself be affected by the world. The they prescribes that attunement, it determines what and how one "sees." View quote
Martin Heidegger
Nietzsche ... does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formulations of his thought, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Nevertheless, the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems. View quote
Martin Heidegger
If in Nietzsche's thinking the prior tradition of Western thought is gathered and completed in a decisive respect, then the confrontation with Nietzsche becomes one with all Western thought hitherto. View quote
Martin Heidegger
he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors. (Martin Heidegger)
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has always already surrendered itself, in its being-among-one-another. View quote
Martin Heidegger
The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small” precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats” and who can transform it in an original manner. View quote
Martin Heidegger
Form displays the relation [to beings] itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open. View quote
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Occupation: German Philosopher
Born: September 26, 1889
Died: May 26, 1976
Quotes count: 90
Wikipedia: Martin Heidegger

Related authors

Edmund Husserl - thumbnail
Edmund Husserl  20 
German Philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre - thumbnail
Jean-Paul Sartre  371 
French Philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche - thumbnail
Friedrich Nietzsche  855 
German Philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - thumbnail
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  126 
German Philosopher
Hannah Arendt - thumbnail
Hannah Arendt  141 
German-American Historian
Soren Kierkegaard - thumbnail
Soren Kierkegaard  354 
Danish Theologian
Jacques Derrida - thumbnail
Jacques Derrida  78 
French Philosopher
Immanuel Kant - thumbnail
Immanuel Kant  250 
German Philosopher
Karl Jaspers - thumbnail
Karl Jaspers  65 
German-Swiss Psychiatrist
Ludwig Wittgenstein - thumbnail
Ludwig Wittgenstein  268 
Austrian Philosopher